After searching the bed, Zu An turned his attention to the drawers along the side of the room. He opened one, and found that they were filled with beautiful dresses. Each dress was made with an incredibly smooth and comfortable material, and each was delicately embroidered.

He moved on to the second drawer—dresses. The third drawer—still dresses…

All the eight drawers were filled with all sorts of beautiful clothes, leaving Zu An slack-jawed. Women sure have a lot of clothes.

The ninth drawer was different, but its contents made Zu An’s face redden. He was looking at a stack of neatly-folded undergarments.

Zu An glanced furtively around the room before taking one out and stuffing it into his robe. She has so many of them anyway. She probably wouldn’t know if one of them went missing.

These words failed to ease the disappointment he felt towards himself for his actions.

He had such a beautiful wife, but he was unable to touch her. In the end, he had to resort to stealing her undergarments. To make things worse, he realized that the current condition his body was in prevented him from using the undergarments as he intended.

“Damn it!” Zu An swore as he prepared to put the undergarment back into the drawer. A sudden thought struck him. Wait a moment, can’t I just pass this to Ji Dengtu to complete my task? I reckon that he won’t be able to tell who it belongs to anyway!

This thought made him uncomfortable. This was still his wife’s undergarment, even if the two of them were related only in name. It didn’t take a genius to figure out just what that perverted middle-aged man was going to do with it.

“Forget it! I’ll just buy a new set of undergarments from a random shop and give it to him,” Zu An muttered under his breath. Unfortunately, he realized none of those four women whom Ji Dengtu mentioned were ordinary people. If he were to buy a low-quality one off the streets, the divine physician would surely see through his deception in an instant.

“I’ll just use Snow’s then!” Zu An recalled how Snow, despite being a maidservant, was fairly well-dressed. In fact, most people who saw her without knowing who she was would probably mistake her as a young miss of a distinguished clan.

That lass tried to kill me anyway. I don’t feel any guilt using her undergarments to accomplish my task.

His mind made up, Zu An hastened to the adjacent room, which belonged to Snow. Immediately, he started sifting through her belongings. Snow’s room was extremely clean. Earlier on, he'd been able to find romance novels hidden in Chu Chuyan’s room. However, when it came to Snow’s room, there was nothing in it that hinted at her interests or preferences, other than a handful of melon seeds scattered around.

“Is the lass really that innocent, or is she simply that good at concealing her true nature?” Zu An wondered. He had hoped to gather some information from her personal possessions, but they held no tangible clues to help him decipher her character.

A sudden, slight noise from outside the room made him jump in fright.

Could it be that Chu Chuyan has decided to return early? This won’t do. I can’t let her find out that I have snuck in here, especially not with this incriminating evidence on me. Otherwise, I won’t be able to wash my reputation clean even if I were to leap into the Yellow River!

Noticing some screens at the back of the room, Zu An scrambled behind them and held his breath. Through the slight crack between the screens, he was still able to observe part of the room.

A black-clothed figure slipped in and began rummaging around Chu Chuyan’s room.

“A woman?” Even though the face of the black-clothed figure was concealed, the relatively smaller physique and alluring silhouette hinted strongly that it was a woman.

A closer look ruled out any possibility that the figure was a man. It was impossible for any man to have such large pectoral muscles, no matter how hard he trained them.

The woman took her time to comb through the room, but seemingly came up empty-handed. She stood in the middle of the room and muttered to herself, “It isn’t here either? Where could she be hiding it then?”

“Hm?” Zu An was alarmed. The woman’s voice was astonishingly familiar. It belonged to the close friend of Chu Chuyan, whom he had met back at the ancestral hall—Pei Mianman.

“Who’s there?!” The woman’s head whipped around, her gaze focused in his direction.

Zu An’s sudden surprise at the woman’s unexpected identity had caused his emotions to fluctuate and had raised his heartbeat, which caught the woman’s attention.

Before he had even considered escaping, the screens burst into pieces, and he saw the woman flying toward him, her palm out in front and ready to strike.

In any other situation, Zu An would surely have complimented her on how fair and smooth her hand was. At the moment, though, he was far from being in the mood to do so. Goosebumps had risen all over his body, and every single cell in his body was screaming at him that he was in great danger.

He threw out a fist in an attempt to fend off the attack, but as soon their hands connected, he was thrown backwards in a spray of blood.

Despite possessing the strength of twenty grown men, Zu An’s power paled in comparison to that wielded by the fair-handed maiden.

Sensing the other party’s killing intent, Zu An dropped all thoughts of caution. He started to shout, “Help…”

Since the woman had snuck into Chu Chuyan’s room in the middle of the night dressed completely in black, she was surely trying to avoid detection. There had to be plenty of experts in the duke’s estate who could deal with her. All he had to do was to catch their attention!

Before his cry could leave his throat, the woman had closed the distance. She seemed to strike him lightly on the chest with her palm, but the impact made him feel as if he had been knocked over by a train. His breath left him in a gentle wheeze.

The woman sneered coldly as Zu An’s body slumped weakly to the ground. A mere second-rank cultivator actually dared to exchange blows with me.

Knowing that her strike had surely killed him, she squatted down and tried to take off the cloth covering his face to reveal his identity.

Zu An’s eyes shot open. While the woman was caught off guard, he wrapped himself around her body, employing the rear naked choke technique taught in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

It went without saying that a truly qualified keyboard warrior needed to have basic knowledge in all fields, in order to make his words sound logical. He’d seen plenty of videos explaining the technique on the internet in his previous life. Unfortunately, he’d lacked the physical capability to put what he knew in theory into practice. However, now that he was stronger than ever, he was confident that he could employ such techniques even more smoothly than any UFC champion!

He knew very well that this woman’s cultivation was far higher than his, and her earlier movements had been too fast for him to follow. If he allowed her time and space, he had no hope of survival. His only chance at victory was to try to turn it into a physical brawl. By exploiting the physical differences between a man and a woman, he might just be able to make a comeback.

The previous strike from the woman could have very well ended his life, had he not decisively taken out the Heiress Ball of Delights in time. He hoped that the item—based on its description—would keep him alive, even if it was by the thinnest thread.

Having the item also renewed his courage and gave him the will to fight back.

Pei Mianman hadn’t expected such a twist to the situation. She used her elbow to strike his body again and again, hoping that he would loosen his grip. Despite her repeated blows, his viselike grip remained firm.

The man had wrapped his body around her tightly. His legs wound around hers and forced them wide open, and her breasts were being molded into all sorts of shapes under the pressure of his elbows.

She had never been taken advantage of by a man all her life, and certainly had never been placed in such a humiliating position. There was no way she could possibly take this lying down!

You have successfully trolled Pei Mianman for 999 Rage points!

She stopped holding back, and tried to apply her killing moves on him.

To her dismay, however, he had pinned her down in an extremely bizarre position, which made it difficult for her to land any effective blows on him. She attempted to leverage her flexibility to escape from his grip.

She could barely contain her anger. She swore to herself that, if she could break free from this fellow’s grip, she would grind every last bit of his bones to dust!

You have successfully trolled Pei Mianman for 999 Rage points!

Zu An couldn’t spare any attention to check on his Rage points. He was completely focused on holding the woman down. He knew that, if she were to break free, it would spell disaster for him.

Strangely, it seemed his strength had grown considerably greater since he’d first clashed with her. From their earlier exchanges, it was apparent that she was much stronger than him. Given that, it should have been very difficult for him to hold her down. Yet, even though he was in a difficult position, his rear naked choke was still keeping her locked in place.

Pei Mianman had also noticed this anomaly. No matter how she struggled and fought back, the other party simply wouldn’t let her go. In fact, it felt like his grip was growing stronger with each blow she landed on him.

As it turned out, Old Mi had neglected to inform Zu An that the Phoenix Nirvana Sutra had another effect other than allowing the practitioner to raise their cultivation level by suffering damage. It also increased the stats of the practitioner in proportion to the severity of their injuries. The closer the practitioner was to death, the greater their fighting prowess would be.

Under normal circumstances, a human would grow weaker the more injuries they sustained, resulting in a drastic reduction in their stats. On top of that, being on the verge of death was an extremely dangerous position. A single strike would result in an instant knock-out. For these reasons, the Phoenix Nirvana Sutra’s enhancement in strength wasn’t as powerful as it sounded in theory.

However, Zu An had the Heiress Ball of Delights, which allowed him to remain in a near-death state without the risk of dying. It also negated the adverse effects brought about by his injuries. This combination maximized the potential of the Phoenix Nirvana Sutra’s effects.

The two continued their tussle, rolling across the ground in a tangle of limbs. Eventually, Zu An managed to gain the upper hand and turn the tables on the woman. He pinned her firmly to the ground, rendering her immobile.

Pei Mianman found it more and more difficult to breathe, as her neck was slowly crushed by the man’s grip. She tried her best to claw at his hand, but to no avail. It was as if she was fighting with a monster who knew nothing of pain or death.

She sensed her life slowly slipping away. Unwilling to meekly meet her demise, a vicious glint flashed across her eyes, and a spark of black flame formed inconspicuously on the tip of her finger.

She had not dared to use her elemental ability out of fear that the fluctuations in the elements would alarm the experts of the Chu clan. Once her identity was revealed, all of the hard work she had put in during this period of time would have gone to waste.

But all of that was pointless in the face of imminent death.

Just as she was about to make her move, the man whispered in her ear, “Pei Mianman, I think we can cooperate with one another.”

In truth, Zu An could have summoned the Poisonous Prick and easily ended her life. However, his mind was filled with the image of her in the ancestral hall—her ravishing figure, her soul-stealing peach-blossom eyes, and the unfathomable smile that lingered on her comely face—and he found himself reluctant to make a move.

It was indeed true that the world was biased towards those who were good-looking.

Zu An knew himself as a simple man true to his desires, and he found nothing wrong with that.

Pei Mianman was shocked to hear those words. The man had seen through her identity! On top of that, the voice sounded oddly familiar. “Who in the world are you?”

She sensed the other party loosening his grip on her neck. After a moment of hesitation, she dispelled the black flame she had summoned.

“You nearly caused my death in the ancestral hall back then. Have you forgotten about me so quickly?” Zu An scoffed.

Pei Mianman’s eyes widened. “Ah, you’re Chu Chuyan’s useless husband, that… Ah. What’s your name again?”

Zu An rolled his eyes, hard.